The autographing list for BookExpo America just went up, and I read them even though I'm not planning to attend this year. Because the lists are hilarious. Publicists attempt to come up with a pithy statement about the book being autographed in twenty words or less, often (seemingly) without any awareness of how genre, publicity campaigns, and the English language work. As a result, we get such amazing descriptions as the following:

Beautifully illustrated guide for the Sex and the City generation. (Guide to what?)

Epic fantasy and sci-fi series with magic, mysticism, and science. (This describes such a large percentage of the sff lists as to be meaningless.)

A funny and poignant story about a very unlikely friendship. (Again, this describes an amazing quantity of the mainstream fiction lists. It is utterly meaningless! But well done on not identifying a single thing about the setting or genre, guys, seriously.)

A world where few can be trusted. (I think this wins the "Genre? Wait, is it even fiction?" award.)

A military experiment questions the human race in this haunting thriller. (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take this literally or not -- like, is this Adam-the-demon-robot-human interrogates humans? I suspect it is, instead, that the existence of X in the experiment leads to pseudo-philosophical questions. Could be wrong!)

An instant steampunk zombie classic! (... okay, I'd read it.)

How a Boston terrier gives a new perspective on single parenthood and unconditional love. (Nothing in the description indicates if this is self-help, or fiction with a talking dog, or what.)

A political thriller about ex kgb and suitcase bombs in the US (ex kgb bombs? ex kgb agents? adjective in search of a noun?)

Oh, and this one requires author and title to make me snerk:Senator Jim DeMint [R-SC], Saving Freedom. DeMint's firsthand account of the unsettling socialist shift.

no subject

Well, it's more a matter of if we'd be able to manage passes. Especially since J's editor (who can SOMETIMES, but not always, and I'm guessing not this year, given how the business is doing) keeps saying he's leaving that company and starting his own...